North East poet Amy Ekins’ debut is an inventory of absence. In this sequence of short poems Ekins imbues the most benign of objects and places – a fish tank, microwave, back yard – with an unseen other, or rather with their lack. The ambition of these poems is to ‘kick out [...] the root’ of a lost love ‘like a wobbling tooth’, to make the object of the poems ‘decades past’. In recognising what is ‘not here’ Ekins propels us to see what is. This inventive first chapbook introduces a talented, young poet, who is at once playful and understated, and who is most definitely ‘here’.
Amy Key
